An open school
Some five years ago, on a morning when mist clung to the hilltops like a forgotten shawl, I set out for a quiet trek with my son Faheem. The hill, modest in height but generous in stories, sat beside our village like a patient elder—listening, watching. That day, it introduced us to a miracle in waiting.
A group of Bakerwal children—ten, perhaps fifteen—emerged from behind the tall grass, curious and hesitant. With sunburnt faces and barefoot resilience, they looked at us as if we were both alien and familiar, the way one might look at an old word in a new book. Their eyes, lit with questions, stopped me in my tracks.
They were nomads of course—born to move, to follow pastures and seasons. But inside them was a stillness that only yearning can bring. And in that stillness, I saw the need—the hunger—to read, to learn, to belong to the world of books as much as to the world of cattle and caravans.
I was only a teacher by profession. That morning, I became one by heart.
I began teaching them at daybreak. Under the trees. Beneath the wide-open sky that refused to judge. We used sticks for pens and earth for paper. Each word was a seed. Each sentence a whisper of a future.
I sought help from PRATHAM, an NGO known not for its noise but for its quiet revolutions. They gave me material—simple, colourful, generous. Books that didn’t just teach letters but dignity. Charts that didn’t just explain things but opened windows.
And so, for a while, we created a school without walls. Where laughter rhymed with learning. Where Faheem too sat among them, erasing the imaginary lines drawn by class, by culture, by habit.
But like all things rooted in movement, the Bakerwal families eventually left—chasing the migration that defines them. The woods went quiet. The hill returned to its old silence. I often wondered where those children had gone. Had they remembered the alphabet we built with pinecones? Or had the wind scattered it all?
This morning, I found out.
A few Bakerwal families returned and camped once more in the nearby forest. I rushed to the woods like one runs to meet a childhood friend. And there they were. Taller. Brighter. Changed, but not unfamiliar. One of the girls recognised me first. Her eyes widened not with surprise—but pride.
Most of them now study in government elementary schools. They carry books, not as burdens, but as badges. They speak of maths and science, of schoolbags and uniforms. Their dreams have shifted from the rhythm of herds to the promise of exams and ambitions.
I felt something stir within—a quiet exhale, a soft nod from the universe. That moment of impulse five years ago had not been futile. The teacher’s work—unmeasured by reports or registers—had bloomed.
In a world addicted to metrics, we often forget that impact doesn’t always wear certificates. Sometimes it wears a shy smile. A confident answer. A poem recited without fear.
The Bakerwal children, once scattered like the stars above their tents, are now constellations—connected, radiant, dreaming. Their journey from the shadows of obscurity to the light of learning tells us something essential: No act of love, however small, ever goes waste.
We only need to begin. The rest, somehow, always finds its way back.
Khursheed Dar, is a teacher by profession.
